Published by Douglas Messerli, the World Cinema Review features full-length reviews on film from the beginning of the industry to the present day, but the primary focus is on films of intelligence and cinematic quality, with an eye to exposing its readers to the best works in international film history.

Friday, January 13, 2017

Larisa Shepitko | Крылья (Krylya) (Wings)

World
War II Soviet fighter pilot Nadezhda Petrukhina (Maya Bulgakovа), now 41, leads
a frustrating life in the post-war Soviet bureaucracy. Although she is awarded
for her job as a principal at a trade school, some of her students do not
appreciate her leadership, and one in particular claims he detests her. Few of
them and even her own adopted daughter comprehend the sacrifices that she and others of the war
generation have made for the country and see as still necessary.

If she is well-known as a wartime hero,
many even mock her continued commitment to Soviet society, her involvement on
numerous committees and other cultural activities. Her daughter Tanya, recently
married, did not even bother to consult with her mother before the wedding, and
Nadezhda only meets the groom long after the ceremony.

Ukrainian-born director Larisa Shepitko
gradually reveals Nadzhda’s pain of being trapped in the stultifying system—as
critic Adam Bingham has noted—by both looking at her character and her actions and by following her gaze and
witnessing her inner thoughts, spectacularly conveyed from time to time throughout
the film by her memories of flying, diving and rolling through the skies. If
she has previously made great sacrifices, her life was at least exciting and
meaningful, whereas her current dedication is not only unappreciated but merely
reiterates the drab world of the Soviet 1960s.

Much
of the greatness of this film, Shepitko’s first feature after graduation from Russia’s
State Institute for cinematography, lies in Bulgakova’s performance as
Nadezhda. With short, cropped hair and dressed in a striped suit and coat, all
of which makes the character seem a bit mannish and authoritative, Bulgakova nonetheless
makes it apparent that behind her no-nonsense attitude, she is a woman with a
great deal of passion, once in love with fellow flier Mitya, whose plane
crashed as she flew with him in formation. More than anything, Bulgakova shows
us without the script having her say it, that Nadezhda is hurt by the contemporary
world which seems to have lost the high ideals of her generation. While she was
once the equal of the men with whom she flew, in this new world she is not even
permitted to enter a restaurant without a male companion.

Just as amazing, moreover, is how the
young Shepitko—whose great film, The
Ascent, I have reviewed elsewhere—so wonderfully perceives the generational
struggles and the disappointment of the course their countrymen and country
have taken. Without specifically criticizing Soviet authoritarianism, Shepitko,
time and again, makes it clear that things are falling apart and that its
citizens have basically given up on their ideals. Nadzhda’s sexless friendship
with a local museum director almost parallels Tanya’s seemingly loveless
relationship with her new husband. And the hostility of her young student, who
is beaten by his father at home, symbolizes a generation that is tired of
having to look up to the heroes of the past, which Nadzhda represents. It is
not truly she whom he detests, but all of those who seemingly promised a world
that never come.

Every now and then, simply to retrace her
life, Nadzhda returns to the local airfield, where the young pilots all greet
her, recognizing her as a former flier. In Wings’last scene she watches as a couple of
small planes take to the air. Another small plane remains on the tarmac, and when the mens’ attention has been directed
elsewhere, Nadzhda clumsily climbs into the pilot’s seat.

When the workers see her they jokingly
applaud her, and, as they move the plane into the hanger, tell her they will
take her on a flight. In fact, as she surely recognizes, they are gently
mocking her since it is only a land-based voyage. But as the plane nears the
hanger, the engine suddenly comes to life, and the plane turns back to the
runway and takes off, the other pilots and workers chasing after it. Nadezhda
has found her wings again.